Representative Barney Frank Will Introduce Legislation To Overturn Three Year Old Republican Internet Gambling Ban

Representative Bary Frank(D-MA) who is the Chairman of the Financial Service Committee in the House will introduce legislation to overturn the Internet gambling ban put in place by the Bush Administration and the Republican majority in Congress at the time. Republicans who have a poor record on individual rights and civil liberties inserted language into a port security bill three years ago, making credit card transactions by consenting adults who wish to play in international gambling illegal. This led to several arrests of American executives of companies involved in Internet gambling.

My own personal opinion is that gambling is not really a good thing. However, in a free society, Republican legislators, often acting on behalf of religious right interests who are opposed to gambling, put such language into law as an expression of writing their own religious beliefs into law. Like many Republican oriented religious beliefs, opposing Internet gambling for all persons is a violation of the individual freedom of adults to choose how to spend their own money. even if gambling itself is not really a real positive influence. However, most adults who choose to gamble do so as only a fun outlet. Only a few persons have problems with gambling. And credit card companies put limits on the amount that one can spend.

Since this Republican legislation has been in effect, it has also greatly impacted the ability of friends of neighbors to use money transfer services to help out friends of neighbors using cash transfer services such as Moneygram or Western Union who have overreacted out of fear to this Republican trampling on individual rights.

The problem is that the Republican philosophy wants to control what Americans are allowed to do or how they can spend their money from cradle to grave. This party of big and intrusive government seems to know no bounds in controlling the personal behavior of Americans. Barney Frank is taking a big step in favor of civil liberties to attempt to roll back at least part of this big intrusion of government in the private lives of Americans by supporting this legislation, and deserves to be applauded for his actions.

One major difference between the two political parties is if Democrats would continue to take a strong stand for individual rights, while the Republicans continue to take strong stands against civil liberties. Nothing could better illustrate which is the true party of big government than this.

Internet poker games or fun games are popular throughout much of the world. However, in the U.S. a few religious right legislators have imposed their will to stop these fun games by citizens. Doesn't this party know no bounds in unreasonable meddling into private lives of the citizens?